Rainbow Valley eBook

“Oh, Norman isn’t mean in some ways.
He’d give a thousand without blinking a lash,
and roar like a Bull of Bashan if he had to pay five
cents too much for anything. Besides, he likes
Mr. Meredith’s sermons, and Norman Douglas was
always willing to shell out if he got his brains tickled
up. There is no more Christianity about him
than there is about a black, naked heathen in Africa
and never will be. But he’s clever and
well read and he judges sermons as he would lectures.
Anyhow, it’s well he backs up Mr. Meredith
and the children as he does, for they’ll need
friends more than ever after this. I am tired
of making excuses for them, believe me.”

“Do you know, dear Miss Cornelia,” said
Anne seriously, “I think we have all been making
too many excuses. It is very foolish and we
ought to stop it. I am going to tell you what
I’d like to do. I shan’t do
it, of course”—­Anne had noted a glint
of alarm in Susan’s eye—­“it
would be too unconventional, and we must be conventional
or die, after we reach what is supposed to be a dignified
age. But I’d like to do it.
I’d like to call a meeting of the Ladies Aid
and W.M.S. and the Girls Sewing Society, and include
in the audience all and any Methodists who have been
criticizing the Merediths—­although I do
think if we Presbyterians stopped criticizing and
excusing we would find that other denominations would
trouble themselves very little about our manse folks.
I would say to them, ’Dear Christian friends’—­with
marked emphasis on ’Christian’—­I
have something to say to you and I want to say it
good and hard, that you may take it home and repeat
it to your families. You Methodists need not
pity us, and we Presbyterians need not pity ourselves.
We are not going to do it any more. And we
are going to say, boldly and truthfully, to all critics
and sympathizers, ’We are proud of our
minister and his family. Mr. Meredith is the
best preacher Glen St. Mary church ever had.
Moreover, he is a sincere, earnest teacher of truth
and Christian charity. He is a faithful friend,
a judicious pastor in all essentials, and a refined,
scholarly, well-bred man. His family are worthy
of him. Gerald Meredith is the cleverest pupil
in the Glen school, and Mr. Hazard says that he is
destined to a brilliant career. He is a manly,
honourable, truthful little fellow. Faith Meredith
is a beauty, and as inspiring and original as she
is beautiful. There is nothing commonplace about
her. All the other girls in the Glen put together
haven’t the vim, and wit, and joyousness and
‘spunk’ she has. She has not an enemy
in the world. Every one who knows her loves
her. Of how many, children or grown-ups, can
that be said? Una Meredith is sweetness personified.
She will make a most lovable woman. Carl Meredith,
with his love for ants and frogs and spiders, will
some day be a naturalist whom all Canada—­nay,
all the world, will delight to honour. Do you
know of any other family in the Glen, or out of it,
of whom all these things can be said? Away with
shamefaced excuses and apologies. We rejoice
in our minister and his splendid boys and girls!”